Obama Asks Republican Senators to Visit Egypt
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – US President Barack Obama asked two senior Republican senators to travel to Egypt to meet with its military leaders and the opposition.
Senator John McCain and Lindsey Graham, both members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, hope to travel to Egypt next week, Reuters reported.
"The president reached out to us, and I said obviously I'd be glad to go," Graham told reporters outside the Senate.
He said specifics of the trip, including with whom he and McCain would meet, had not yet been worked out.
US officials have been grappling with how to respond to the situation in Egypt since its elected Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, was ousted by the military on July 3.
In particular, they have struggled with how to handle the $1.55 billion in mostly military aid Washington sends to Cairo each year.
McCain and Graham, two of the Senate's most influential voices on foreign policy matters, have at times been harsh critics of Obama's foreign policy.
The White House has recently been reaching out to them on a range of issues.
